Realism

1. “The Story of an Hour”
a.) -There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
-She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.

-In the street below a peddler was crying his wares.

-There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

-She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.

b.) The social issue is how women are treated in marriages. In the story the main character is happy of the news of her husband dying. I think that this story describes how women who are in relationships with controlling relationships feel.
Here’s some direct evidence:
“There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.”

2. “The battle with Mr. Covey”

a.) -On one of the hottest days of the month of August, 1833, Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli, and myself were engaged in fanning wheat....The work was simple, requiring strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely unused to such work, it came very hard. About three o'clock of that day, I broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb....

-He then gave me a savage kick in the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet: but, stopping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell. While down in this situation, Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking off the half- bushel measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a large wound, and the blood ran freely; and with this, again told me to get up.

-At this moment I resolved to go to my master, enter a complaint, and ask his protection. In order to [do] this, I must that afternoon walk seven miles; and this, under the circumstances, was truly a severe undertaking.

-The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death, and think now that I should have done so, but the blood so matted my hair as to stop the wound.

-After lying there about three quarters of an hour, I nerved myself up again, and started on my way, through bogs and briers, barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet sometimes at nearly every step;

b.) The Social Issue that Douglass was trying to address is slavery.

I think one of the reasons that Douglass wrote this story was to give people some insight on how it was to be a slave. Cause a lot of people during that time claimed to be abolitionists but they didn’t really do anything to try and end slavery. He probably also wrote this because most people didn’t realist how bad slavery was.

3. The Message by Grandmaster Flash would be a good example of realism. In this song he’s talking about what it’s like to be a African American I living in the ghetto and he uses a lot of detailed descriptions of poverty. Here are some of the lyrics:

Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just
Dont care
I cant take the smell, I cant take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away, but I couldnt get far
Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car

Dont push me, cause Im close to the edge
Im trying not to loose my head
Its like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under

Standing on the front stoop, hangin out the window
Watching all the cars go by, roaring as the breezes
Blow
Crazy lady, livin in a bag
Eating out of garbage piles, used to be a fag-hag
Search and test a tango, skips the life and then go
To search a prince to see the last of senses
Down at the peepshow, watching all the creeps
So she can tell the stories to the girls back home
She went to the city and got so so so ditty
She had to get a pimp, she couldnt make it on her
Own